Greene usually subdivides his fiction into novels or entertainments. This is to an extent the former, but superlatively the latter. As an entertainment, it is an adventure story with some fauve scenery— Haiti, that "shabby land of terror" under the regime of Papa Doc, a dictator who may be a survival—or revival—of Baron Samedi. As a novel, even if it is not as seriously concerned with conscience and commitment as its predecessors, there are reminiscent asides; and there's an attractive affair. The comedians of the title are Smith, Jones and Brown, as improbably brought together by the "authoritative practical joker" as the old routine they suggest. They meet on the way down to Haiti where Brown, who tells the story, is summoned by his mother, a grande amoureuse, who lives and dies with abandon. Brown, who was born in Monaco, is not only a man without a country but a purpose or a belief. Jones is a confidence man with a special, unexpected innocence. And Smith is a freedom-riding vegetarian with a dream of nut cutlets and educational films for the natives. Together they are involved in this variation of the absurd: death, the suicide of an ex-minister; love, Brown's attachment to the young wife of an Ambassador; hope, the liberation of Haiti from Papa Doc; and faith, Brown's not quite lapsed Catholicism.... Greene says, comedians are an "honorable profession... If only we could be good ones the world might gain at least a sense of style." And Greene's Comedians is eminently, expertly stylish. It may not be his most important book but a good many attractive adjectives apply.
Pub Date: Jan. 28, 1965
ISBN: 0143039199
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1965
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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